Tampa Bay Buccaneers: Why drafting Kellen Mond makes perfect sense

While the current quarterback situation for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers is the best it has ever been, it’s never a bad idea to look ahead

Tom Brady is the current, and what sounds like, the future quarterback of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Brady continues to say that he wants to play to the age of 45 and possibly past that. Although he is playing at an elite level, it’s not a bad idea to start looking at a succession plan, and no, Blaine Gabbert is not it.

Brady is going to be the franchise quarterback for at least the next couple of years but he will be 44 years old heading into the 2021 season, and while he continues to beat Father Time, there will come a day where Brady eventually retires and the Buccaneers need to be prepared for when that day comes.

The best quarterback the Buccaneers could have is one that is both mobile and can accurately deliver the ball from the pocket. Far too many mobile quarterbacks are inaccurate. Think Cam Newton, Teddy Bridgewater, and Jameis Winston. However, this style of quarterback can be lethal when they’re accurate. Think Patrick Mahomes and Deshaun Watson.

The best quarterback would be one that has pocket awareness, is mobile, and has a cannon of an arm. Right now, the Buccaneers don’t have that, but there is a quarterback in this years’ draft that may fall low enough for the Bucs to pick him up in the later rounds. His name is Kellen Mond.

Mond played all four years of his college career at Texas A&M where he put up big numbers but always flew under the radar. He was never in the Heisman talk and the Aggies never competed for a national championship. This was mainly because they played in the SEC West, which has been dominated by Alabama.

In 2020, Kellen Mond and the Aggies went 9-1 with their only loss coming from the Alabama Crimson Tide. To put that into perspective, if they were in the SEC East, they would have gone to the SEC Championship Game, since the SEC East leader was Florida, who the Aggies beat earlier in the season.

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One knock on his game is his accuracy, but with each year that has passed, Mond only got better in this department. In his final two years, he completed over 60% of his passes and only threw 12 interceptions while throwing 39 touchdowns.

In his senior year, Mond threw for over 2,200 yards and had 19 touchdowns while only getting picked off three times. He completed 63.3% of his passes and had a quarterback rating of 146.9, which ranked fifth amongst all quarterbacks in the SEC.

In Mond’s college career, he totaled 9,661 passing yards and 71 touchdowns to only 27 interceptions, and over half of those interceptions came in his first two seasons. Mond also has a career passing percentage of 59% and a quarterback rating of 132.

Another good aspect of Mond’s game is that he can escape the pressure and be mobile if he needs to be. In his career, Mond has over 1,600 rushing yards and 22 rushing touchdowns.

In the Senior Bowl, Mond went 13 for 25 and had 173 passing yards and two touchdowns with zero interceptions. As for the cherry on top, he tucked the ball and ran it in for a two-point conversion, and won the Senior Bowl MVP.

While he is considered a mobile quarterback, make no mistake that he is very comfortable throwing from the pocket. Often when a mobile quarterback begins to feel the pressure from defenders, their first instinct is to bail, but in Mond’s case, he stands in the pocket until the play develops. This is a good quality of Mond’s but there were a lot of instances where he took big hits because of this.

The most impressive part about Kellen Mond is that he continues to get better with each year that he plays. He is not good enough to be a starter as soon as he comes into the NFL, but with some time and good coaching, he has the potential to be a really good quarterback in the NFL.

The best thing that the Buccaneers can hope for if they draft Mond, is that he would be able to sit behind Brady for the next couple of seasons and learn from the greatest quarterback to ever play the game. With the way that the NFL is trending towards the mobile quarterback, the Bucs are going to need to get their hands on one before it’s too late, and Kellen Mond may just be the perfect fit.